


The Road to Hell

by Tawabids



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angel John, Demon Moriarty, Gore, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 12:25:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is very old, but Sherlock makes him feel young. Then he gets orders from on high: his final task on Earth is to ensure that Sherlock Holmes is damned to hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road to Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [this prompt on the Sherlock BBC Kink Meme](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/17487.html?thread=102068047#t102068047): "Demon!Jim and angel!John fighting for Sherlock's soul." It doesn't quite get there until the end.
> 
> Gorgeous art by [so-shhy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/so_shhy/pseuds/so_shhy) posted with permission.

 

“Falling’s just like flying, except there’s a more permanent destination,” Moriarty said once, though John only heard about it later. Once you knew what Moriarty truly was, it was less witty wordplay and more simple observation by a man who knew both well, who had fallen and flown in a very literal sense. It was also a pointless comparison since at the time, Sherlock had experience in neither. 

But he would learn.

\---

John had been very tired for a very long time.

He wasn't sure exactly when it had started. In the nineteenth century seemed likely. When science had made its first real mark on His name, when the ancient spark of 'evolution', smouldering in the minds of philosophers and farmers for as long as questions had been an acceptable pastime, had started to blaze. John hadn't seen His face since the great battle, the splitting and the fall of his brother Lucifer and the host that could no longer be called kin. John had fought in that war, they all had, but afterwards he'd still been sent to guard and wander the earth like so many others. "Your role is important. Paradise will come when your work is done," Gabriel promised. But he promised that to _everyone_.

John's orders came in signs, visions and rare visits from those of higher rank, but they came intermittently. When they arrived he abandoned the life he was living and went to his tasks, but sometimes cities rose and fell before new orders were revealed to him. He could forget himself for whole decades, sometimes longer. Those were always the best times. In Sparta he led armies and saved the golden age of Athens, but then brought down that beautiful city on orders from on high. In Gaul he married a widow and raised her children, until orders took him away from her grandchildren and pointed him towards Africa. In Abyssinia one century without orders became two. He was an adviser to a dynasty and when the next came to power, entombed alive for more than a hundred years. He found his wings again after he was freed, and ended up in the Himalayas, spent three generations there carrying water and never speaking or asking for more than he needed to survive.

When the claustrophobia of the tomb had finally faded, he travelled across continents and was interrupted by new orders to protect certain very specific people from the great fire of London. The ones he couldn't save haunted him for a time and he couldn't stand the city, but later he settled in Britain just in time for Napoleon. He remembered he had been a soldier once, and the navy became his home after that. He took the name John, simple and forgettable, and slipped from one identity to the next; people had started to measure lifespans now and no longer shrugged when they learned their great-grandfathers had fought beside him.

Then came Charles Darwin and questions, and John started to wonder if there were truths even his kind didn't know. He was given orders to leave the navy to discredit this new challenge. He become a priest and a doctor. For decades after, natural selection would be a lost cause, but that wouldn't stick. Truth would out, they said, and it made John feel old.

London became his world for a time. He went back to the military, rose through the hierarchies and then disappeared until all his comrades had retired, returning to rejoin the lowest ranks. He started to forget once again. He went through medical school twice, graduating in 1912 and in 1998, spent most of the sixties and seventies in the American air force. His only instructions that century were to save a very ordinary woman for some future purpose, and he called in the necessary favours to forge himself a new identity as her long-lost brother. With his help Harry survived the worst years of the alcoholism and he even saw her happily married, but she seemed to sense his deception on some level. He stepped back after that and watched her from a distance. He was sent overseas. He forgot.

In Afghanistan was where the bullet found him. He'd died many times before, escaping hospital beds and mortuaries and even once a public operating table. This time was different. He was pulled back from the brink before his heart stopped, held tight and watched closely by friends and protectors. They sutured him up and sent him to air-conditioned tents in a sandy ocean. The pain and drugs overwhelmed him and he begged, "Just let me die, I'm immortal, I'll find my wings again, I'll come back," so there were diagnoses of delusion and PTSD. He was forced to live with the scar, a strange mark on flesh that would have been reborn if only he’d had a clean death. He stared at the scar for hours every day. A slow recovery was so foreign to him. He felt claustrophobic, as if his own body was the tomb this time. He almost abandoned his human flesh, but there was a young sergeant missing a leg who told John he liked seeing his face every day. John didn't want to take that away from the sergeant, so he fought his fears and stayed.

The only way to regain his freedom was to accept a pension, therapy, a notebook that said 'trust issues' and hands that shook without something to occupy them. He felt old, and tired, as if his wings had been clipped for the first time in many centuries.

Then came Sherlock.

\---

For a few glorious months, he forgot about a higher authority, he forgot his true nature, he even forgot the very idea of wings (clipped or unclipped). Sherlock said he was married to his work; for that short time, John knew what it meant not to be.

And then (so soon after saving Harry! He thought he would have decades) came new orders. Tossing and turning on the too-soft mattress of the upstairs bed in Baker St, John felt the presence of his own kind. He curled up and pressed his hands over his ears, but it didn't retreat. At last he sat up and slouched over his knees. A figure made of crimson resin and white plasma stood at the end of the bed.

"Hello, Gabriel," John said.

"You seem disheartened, brother," Gabriel's voice was like a solar flare in miniature. It would have destroyed a human mind. "Does my presence displease you?"

"Course not, Gabe, you know I love hearing from you," John gave his broadest smile. "I'm just tired."

"I have a task for you," Gabriel's aura grew brighter as his mood intensified. John was worried it could be seen under the door, and it wasn't like Sherlock kept regular sleeping hours. Perhaps Gabriel wouldn't mind if he got up and put a towel down to hide the light. The archangel continued, "It is perhaps the most important task you will ever undertake. The last task that will be expected to you."

"What is it?" John frowned, forgetting about light pollution and Sherlock's insomnia for a moment.

"Your companion. His choices will be of unfathomable importance in the coming era," the liquid crimson of Gabriel's hair darkened. "You must ensure he is not Saved, brother."

"Wait, what?" John frowned. "You mean... let him die?"

"That is not what I mean."

John stared at the quintessential being in front of him. He was suddenly conscious of how much weight he'd put on since he got back from Afghanistan, how he hadn't gotten laid since long before that, how tousled his hair was, that he was wearing a Big Pharma T-shirt Sarah had given him, and that he hadn't flossed before bed.

"But all humans can enter His kingdom," John said. "All of them. If they want it. We can't... we can't take that choice away from them. Not even from one of them."

"These are your orders," Gabriel's voice became the sound of the sun burning unfettered. "This must happen. Sherlock Holmes must fall to hell and become sole property of the Adversary. THIS IS YOUR FINAL TASK."

The last words were so powerful the room shivered. Dust trickled from the roof and John's bedclothes rippled away from the figure. He covered his face. It was millenia since he had seen another of his kind in all their pure glory. When he lowered his arm, Gabriel was gone.

"Christ," John muttered, and then slapped his own wrist. "Sorry! Bit of a shock, that's all. I'll hop to it."

\---

A part of him didn't believe it would happen. The orders had to be a piece in a more complicated plan, didn't they? He was supposed to _try_ and ensure Sherlock went to hell - but then somehow that would save Sherlock's soul. Or his life, or both. John was a mere servant, he couldn't see the bigger picture, and there was just _no way_ he could comprehend damning his friend. Sherlock's morals were... unconventional, yes, but no way was the man deserving of the eternal fire.

Soon after that came five pips, and bombs, and Sherlock's callous glee. "Try to remember a woman's life is on the line," John preached, and later practically begged, "There are lives at stake here, Sherlock! Just so we're clear, do you care about that at all?"

But by his own admission, Sherlock didn't. John wanted to shake him, punch him, tell him, "Don't you understand? It isn't just strangers. It's your soul. Everyone dies and if you do, they'll take your soul." But Sherlock wouldn't have listened, and - though it stuck in his throat, though it made his gut writhe, though he grew dizzy with the thought of it - John had orders to follow. If Sherlock wanted to damn himself, John mustn't stop that.

When he finally met the man with the stolen voices, he discovered he might not even have to send Sherlock to hell: hell was coming to them.

"Keluladin?" the man in the suit gasped, face wide with exaggerated shock. "Or rather, what's the pet human name you've branded yourself with - John? What a delightful surprise this is, John!"

"I don't know you," said John, still cuffed to the handle of the car door and reeling from the stinking cloth they'd pressed to his mouth. He hadn't heard his true name since he'd given it, once, to a human he'd loved. That had been a very, very long time ago and any mortal memory of it was long dead.

"But it's me!" cried the man John now remembered was Jim. He was beaming from ear to ear now, his eyes wild. "Our host guarded the east gate of Eden together! You remember, back when the world was flat?"

John stared at him. For a split second the man blurred at the edges, and in his features John saw a distantly familiar face. In disgust he sneered. "You fell, brother."

"Oh no, no, no, I would call it more of a controlled dive," Jim grinned. "Anyway. Sorry about all this, I hope you didn't like this identity you've got going. I am almost certainly going to have to kill you at least once. Are you under orders?"

There was the weight of a glacier behind his words. Demons were forbidden from interfering with the lives of Angels, as part of the treaty between G-d and the Adversary. Jim seemed unconcerned that he was breaking this cardinal rule. "No," John lied. "I'm between jobs."

"I hope so," Jim's eyes crinkled. "I'd feel awful bad if I got you in trouble with daddy."

"And you?" John glared. "How does this game fit into the grand scheme of things for the kingdom of hell?"

"Oh, John, don't overstate yourself," Jim leaned forward in the car and pinched his cheek, hand snaking after him when John tried to dodge it. He could feel the welt Jim's fingers left for days after. Angels and demons were forbidden from touching. "Sherlock is just a pleasant distraction. Call it practice for bigger things."

\---

At the pool, John tried to hold the demon's body hostage, willed Sherlock to run. He wished he could tell him, "I can't die, I'll come back, but you won't, you'll go straight down-" but millenia of habit held his secrets in. And Sherlock didn't run. He held his ground until Jim walked away, and John cursed inwardly and crouched in despair as the snipers returned. Sherlock's loyalty was enough to redeem him. The concussive force of the exploding semtex would liquidate Sherlock's vital organs, burn him beyond recognition and send his soul straight to heaven. John would have failed in his final task, and he would be left on Earth until the end times. He would never see Sherlock again - but at least his friend would not be in hell. It hurt, like the bullet had hurt, to think he had failed in his orders. But Sherlock would not be in hell.

When they both made it through, John thought, “I’ve been given another chance. Another chance to fulfill my work.

Oh, Father. I can’t.”

\---

He thought it would be alright somehow. He would keep Sherlock alive, that was the most important thing. When it was time came to send Sherlock to his terrible fate he would know, he would just know. He’d always succeeded when the path ahead was part of the greater plan. Always. He had never even considered the possibility of doing otherwise. Why would he? His orders brought good to the world, his purpose was to restore order and safeguard life and ensure the best future for humanity and for Him. Why would he ever be conflicted about that?

Was this what the fallen host felt? Was that what he was becoming? Or was this test part of his final task?

For a few months he expected Irene Adler would do his job for him, which caused him an unbearable – almost sinful – amount of envy. When they went to Baskerville and Sherlock’s mood swung into a vicious rages, he felt a surge of disappointment and thought perhaps this was the moment. This was the precipice of damnation and he would just have to push his friend over. When Sherlock nearly destroyed John's mind with drugs and tricks of light and sound, he almost _wanted_ to push him over. But by the time they were back in London the wanting had past.

“It isn’t about what you want,” John groaned, scrubbing his hands through his hair on a rare moment of privacy, in the train toilet on the way home. “It’s all part of His plan, you know it is.”

He had to make a more dedicated effort. Sooner or later, Sherlock would have the opportunity to do something so depraved, so unconscionable, that his soul would be tarnished forever. When that opportunity came, John would be there to ensure his self-destruction.

"You have to consider the possibility that you've been taken in too," Sherlock said to John, after Lestrade came to tell him of Scotland Yard's encroaching suspicions.

John considered it. Kidnapping, poisoning children, that would certainly get you a ticket to hell if you didn't redeem yourself - was it possible that Sherlock would sink so low just to raise his reputation? If that were true, did John enable him somehow? Had he fed a lust for fame that was now out of control? No, John couldn't believe it. Sherlock didn't do things for attention, except as a means to something else. If anything, he interpreted others' love or adulation as highly suspicious, probably overstated and likely to lead to pain. Why else was he such cold bastard to everyone, even his own brother? John knew a part of the man wanted companionship, but he still shied away from it at every opportunity.

Things were coming to a head. John could sense it. As they ran through the London alleys, the handcuff cutting into his wrist, he knew he had to make Sherlock do something soon. He suspected it would involve a betrayal. Perhaps, if he tried to turn Sherlock in to the police, Sherlock might be forced to assault him, even kill him if John struggled. No - while they sat tapping their fingers in Kitty's unlit flat, he knew his friend would be merely be confused by his sudden cowardice and would likely disappear alone. Perhaps he could make Sherlock believe he, loyal John, was somehow working for Moriarty - no again. Sherlock would see through him. Sherlock always saw through him. Then perhaps he could push in the other direction, attempt something drastic and irrational to save Sherlock's reputation, threaten to shoot a Lestrade or another officer. Force Sherlock to intervene and hurt John to save a bystander. But no, no, no. If Sherlock was defending an innocent, he would be rewarded after death, not punished with damnation. 

There had to be a way. He remembered the scent of cruelty on his friend, the night of two pink pills. Sherlock had been willing then. He would be willing again.

He let Sherlock go his own way. He needed time to himself, to think, and to work out whether Moriarty would get in his way. He went to see the elder Holmes. 

Every time he spoke to Mycroft, he had to remind himself he was speaking to a mortal. The elder Holmes reminded him indisputably of Gabriel, or one of the other commanders of the hosts. Perhaps that was why John had not for a moment been afraid of him, when they’d first met in a quiet warehouse. This time he _was_ afraid, but not of Mycroft. He was afraid because the man’s mortality was showing.

“This is what you were trying to tell me, isn’t it?” John gritted. “Watch his back, ‘cos I’ve made a mistake.”

And Mycroft, only human, was _sorry_.

When the phone call came on the street outside St Bart's, John knew this was it.

“Oh God,” he blasphemed without a second thought. He stood and lost himself, watching Sherlock’s voice die. His brain, an old and tired mind that burned crimson and white inside a grey and dust body, tried to deny it, disbelieved it with the force of a prayer – it wasn’t – he wasn’t – Rich Brook’s bullshit couldn’t be real –

But real or not, Sherlock was standing there on the roof. John knew suddenly that this was the moment. This was his task. Because he could save him. In any number of ways, John could save Sherlock's life. He could have spread his wings and been on the rooftop in three seconds. He could have given Sherlock his true name, in a faded fraction of his true voice, and even Sherlock Holmes would have stopped and listened (the delicate wires of the cellphone would likely have been vaporized, but even that one word would have been enough). He could perhaps– with some concentration, because it had been years and years and years since he’d tried this – even have conjured an omen that bystanders would have missed but that Sherlock could not have denied. He could have gained himself the time one way or another.

But suicide was a mortal sin for mortal men, and Sherlock had to be damned. John tore himself apart just to hold himself in place, drained his own strength in the effort to do nothing.

“Nope,” John said. “Don’t—”

\---

Later, at the grave, he said what he could. He had realised that as this had been his final task he had no purpose any more. All work was done. He had obeyed to the letter. He was a soldier after the war was won. He could go home.

But, like a slow boil, he had also become aware that he may as well have been born into this war, onto this earth. The Eden he remembered from his youth was gone, the garden was desert and oil fields, the plants had adapted to new soils, the man and woman had multiplied and assimilated and invented until they were not the same species John remembered from childhood. He did not know how to exist without the adversity of this imperfect world. He was afraid to enter His kingdom.

“No, please, there’s just one more thing,” John said, half to Sherlock and yet wholly to Him. “One more miracle, Sherlock, for me.”

But he knew Sherlock couldn’t grant miracles, and he wasn’t sure whether his Father was listening.

\---

A week later, he was in an ally with his back was against a brick wall with a demon holding each arm and Moriarty clicking his tongue as he stepped out of the shadows. John twisted his neck to stare at the two thugs who had jumped him. They were in sharp-cut suits, but the hands locked around his elbows were blue-black and reptilian, and there were horns rising through the brims of their archaically noir hats.

“What the hell are you doing?” he hissed, snapping his gaze towards Moriarty. “Teach your boys some manners. They can’t be wearing inhuman shapes up here.”

“It’s funny that you put it like that,” Moriarty droned, glancing at the sky. “Manners. Like they’d forgotten to tuck their shirts in at nice French restaurant. Did Sherlock ever take you to a nice French restaurant?”

John bit down on his tongue. His nostrils flared. “I mean it. Someone will see.”

“Oh, no, some human will see!” Moriarty cried in a high voice. He turned and shouted towards the entrance to alley. “Hello! Look, here! There’s blimmin’ devils here! Real, living devils with gnarly bits and everything!” he turned sharply back to John, his eyes hooded. “I don’t think they care. All been spoiled for special effects, you know. Hollywood.”

“What do you want?” John snarled.

"I want a nice chat between grown-ups,” Moriarty said in a disgustingly friendly voice, as if he was surprised John was being so difficult. He winced. “I’ve got this sweet little story put together, but there’s just one thing I can’t figure out. What were your orders?”

John’s features relaxed. He titled his head a little.

"Come on, don't let's do this coy thing. Were you his guardian angel? His guide? His redeemer? Daddy forbid - his _temptation_?"

"I had no orders," John said dryly.

Moriarty gave an echoing groan and shook his head. "Dr Watson," he said, in a mockingly upper-class London accent. "This isn't a difficult question. Even your wee, tiny brain can cope with it," his voice returned to its usual drawl. "Was Sherlock incidental? Was there someone else you were sent to protect? His insufferable brother? That plodding detective-inspector?"

"I haven't been under orders since the nineties," John said through gritted teeth as the demon's claws tightened on his arms. He could almost feel the ice-burn of their skin through his jersey, but it wasn't quite painful.

"Alright, fine," Moriarty huffed. "Here's your options. You're practically human, after all, you should have a choice whether you go to heaven or hell. If you tell me your orders, I'll leave you alone. If you don't, my boys will drag you home with me. And yes," he sneered, "our bodies burn just as well as mortal souls do."

A muscle flexed in John's neck. He had not the faintest hope that Moriarty was bluffing. The man would pull him down, chain him on the burning mountains and leave him. John thought he could probably escape eventually. In maybe a thousand years or so. Besides, what did it matter if the man knew his orders? What more damage could Moriarty possibly do? 

"My orders were to make sure Sherlock Holmes went to hell," John said quietly.

A wrinkle appeared between Moriarty's eyes. For a half a second, before the look was swept away quickly under a mask of cynicism, John thought the man actually might be surprised. Then he shrugged, "Ugh, boring. I do that to six humans before breakfast."

The bastard wrinkled his nose and licked the inside of his bottom lip as if he couldn’t get rid of a foul taste from his mouth. Taking a step closer, he reached up to cup John’s cheek, brushing his thumb along his jaw line. John clenched his teeth to keep any noise from slipping out as he felt his skin peel away and the smell of cooking meat filled his nose. Moriarty took his hand away and stared at his own blistered fingers. “Why do you think He did that?” he frowned. “Made our touch unbearable to one another? Seems a bit Victorian, in my opinion. But he's always been a bit _weird_ about _sex_ ,” he gasped the last word in a stage whisper.

John looked away. He took a breath. “Tell me,” he said quietly. “I’ll play whatever game you want, just tell me. Is Sherlock down there? Have you seen him?”

“I can assure you he’s damned as the Black Canyon of Colorado,” Moriarty stuck his hands in his pockets. “He _almost_ saved himself at the end. Suicide doesn’t count if you’re only doing it to protect your friends, or else hell would be full of martyrs from the battlefield.”

John forgot how to breathe. “What?” he mouthed, though his ears were ringing too loud to hear if he was making any sound. “What do you mean, protect his friends? That’s why he…?”

“Ye-eah,” Moriarty shrugged and gave a bashful grin. “My fault again, I had to give him the proper motivation. Sorry. Bu-u-ut you know, if you convince yourself you’ll torture your arch enemy in the worst ways imaginable before you throw yourself over, well,” he raised his eyebrows. “That sort of stamps your passport to the underworld, I’m afraid.”

“You can’t know—” John rasped.

“He said he would, and I quote, shake hands with me in hell,” Moriarty gave a long sigh and kicked at the gravel under their feet. “That constitutes a verbal contract with a demon. Takes a bit more than Atticus Finch to worm your way out of that one,” he gave an overly-sweet giggle.

John closed his eyes. He thought if he didn’t he might actually lose any and all control over his body, and revenge killing was kind of against his principles.

“Here’s the thing, though,” Moriarty said in a dead voice. John raised his head slowly. “I thought I’d pop down to welcome him. You can imagine there’s a bit of culture shock, waking up in a realm of eternal fire and agony. I wanted to be mannerly, you’d like that. So I waited,” Moriarty tipped his head, wincing, “And I waited. And a few days up here is weeks down there. I had time to do a proper search. What do you know?” his eyes widened dramatically. “No-o Sherlock.”

John didn't speak.

Moriarty paced in an aimless circle. "And I know he's damned. A demon always knows. We get kind of a gold star for it, y'see," he sneered at John. "But nope. No Sherlock. So here’s what I really need from you, Dr Watson," he leaned in close, mouth panting against John's ear. "Where the fuck is he?"

"I don't know."

Alive. The bastard, the sneaky, clever, thoughtless bastard. Somehow - John rewound his memories, tried to figure it out - somehow, he'd faked it. The pulse beat in his head. _Alive. Alive. Alive._

Moriarty drew back, neck twitching like a raised cobra as he studied John’s face. His mouth widened into a parody of a smile. “You really didn’t know, did you? He didn't even bother to tell you.”

John couldn’t answer. He felt like formaldehyde was pumping through his body.

Moriarty nodded at the two thuggish demons. "Let him go. He'll probably trip over his own shoelaces coming after me."

In that moment, John felt like Sherlock was beside him. _Think_ , Sherlock seemed to be saying. _He's realised something. Something important. THINK._ Look at the demon mooks and their inhuman forms. Look at how Moriarty had interfered with John's life with no care about whether he was under orders or not. Both were a flagrant disregard for the rules that even the Adversary had agreed to, millenia ago. It was as if Moriarty didn't care about being punished. Previous demons who'd disobeyed the rules had always got their comeuppance in ways too terrible to comprehend, but somehow Moriarty thought he would get away with all this.

John remembered Moriarty's words on the way to the pool all those months ago. _'Practice'_ , that's what Moriarty had called Sherlock. John was sure that this particular epithet had never been expressed to Sherlock himself. It was a joke that Moriarty was giving, unexplained, to _him_. As the demons released his arms and blood rushed tingling back into his fingers, a ratchet clicked into place inside John's brain.

"You're planning a coup," John breathed, rubbing the feeling back into his elbows. Walking away into the shadows, he saw Moriarty's figure freeze. "You're going to take over hell," as Moriarty turned, John thought of his orders, "Not just that. You're going to take everything. Sherlock wasn't being damned for his sake. He was being _gifted_ to the Adversary as a weapon. The only weapon that has a chance of beating you,” he sucked in a breath. “Because He wants to preserve the status quo. Better the devil you know.”

"It really astounds me," Moriarty said, accentuating every syllable. "That you were clever enough to figure that out but not quite clever enough to keep it to yourself," he clicked his tongue. “I’ll tell Sherlock you said hi.”

“What can you possibly do to him that you haven’t already done?” John snarled.

“I can save his life,” Moriarty shrugged. He nodded at the two thugs. "Cut out his tongue and lobotomise him before you take him to hell, but for Daddy’s sake don’t let him die or he’ll just heal up again. I'd rather this not get out prematurely."

He turned on his heel. As he took a step away the thugs reached for John. John set his jaws together. Sharp claws dug through his clothes and seared his skin. The smell of sulphur snapped through the air.

He opened his wings.

\---

Spurs of bone emerged first, ripping through his second-favourite jersey and opening the way for the flooding growth of feathers. The wings unfolded like guy-wires snapping under the wind of a hurricane, like the recoil of a Barret .50 rifle, and the demons were knocked backwards with such force that the pavement cracked where they landed. John flapped once, his peripheral vision filled with his own grey-brown feathers, leaped, and on the second sweep he was airborne.

It had been – what? Five hundred years? Six hundred? – a very long time since he’d flown, but you didn’t forget. London shrunk beneath him and the snatches of air in his nose smelled of each individual layer of smog as he rose through them. Behind, he heard a scream of rage and the whump of a second pair of wings as Moriarty followed him. He didn’t look back. His body was a compressed spring and shifting an inch could knock him out of line and send him tumbling into his own jet stream.

The moisture in his eyes froze as the air thinned and grew colder. His lungs screamed for oxygen with each wing beat. He was only alive because his shape had automatically shifted, away from the human end of the spectrum and into something very slightly deified.

Behind him came the beat of Moriarty’s wings. John guessed that less than a hundred feet separated him. Evidently Moriarty was the faster flier, and John was already getting tired. He was too old for an air chase, and he hadn’t battled his own kind since the war of heaven.

He planed off and took the chance to look back, confirming Moriarty’s position. He cursed to see the bastard was even closer than he thought and angled his wings, following an invisible curve down over the city. He flapped in earnest to gain speed, wishing he’d been blessed with darker feathers. That might have allowed him to vanish against the shadows of high cloud.

Moriarty was almost on him. John waited until he could almost hear laboured breathing above his own slow gasps, then flexed to catch the air with a smack, rising and slowing his pace in the same movement so that Moriarty shot by beneath him. John dropped and flung out his arms to gain purchase on the man’s neck or wings. No duelling rules, no mannerly behaviour up here; it was hurt, maim, kill, anything to get an upper hand.

Moriarty had anticipated him. In a split second he had folded one creamy white wing, the colour a vicious clash with his dark hair and navy-blue suit, and rolled in the air to catch John’s hands as he reached out. He dragged John in close as if for an embrace and clenched his arm around John’s neck in a choking headlock. His legs wrapped John’s waist and tightened them into a bone-cracking vice. He folded his wings and John took the full weight of both of them, flapping frantically even as his vision darkened with the pressure on his carotid arteries. He felt a hand one of his flailing wings, tightening on the fragile arch of the humerus, burning through the feathers. They were approaching terminal velocity; feathers from John’s buffeted wings and petals of John’s torn sleeves were ripped off by the airstream. 

John reached up and scraped his nails down Moriarty’s face, catching on his bottom lip. Spheres of blood were snatched away on the breeze as soon as they welled up. Jim screamed and tightened his hand, and John felt the snap of his wing breaking. For a moment his vision went black and he felt nothing. When he came to, scant seconds had passed and they were still falling.

Moriarty was crouched on his back now as if riding a horse down a steep gully, legs tightening around John’s ribs and arm still dragging John’s head back. The lights of London were growing like a flower garden in fast-forward. Moriarty was going to take him past the point of no return, past the invisible calculated boundary where he could still pull out of the dive with a broken wing, and then he would release him.

John would be liquidated when he hit the ground. He’d survive, of course, and restore his human body from the ashes in an unnamed grave or a police evidence locker. It would only take about six or seven years. He could shift back to his true form now, but Moriarty would do the same and John had no confidence he could take an unleashed demon. Besides. He liked this body. If it died he could rebuild it, but changing his shape would destroy it for good. Dr John Watson, Captain John Watson, would truly be dead.

The problem with angels – fallen or not, John found – was that they thought winning the battle was all about strength, cunning, and agility. Perfect creatures never had the imagination to use imperfection. Gabriel, for instance, refused to take human form except for the briefest of moments. He and most others hated the idea of being posted on earth for thousands of years, to serve among humans the way John did. They called this body fragile, unreliable, unstable. It was, after all, not born like true animals but forged and held together by John’s own will.

Now, without a second his thought, he loosened that will.

Not enough to change shape. But under Moriarty’s hands, John’s skin slipped and cracked. The flesh below broke off and crumbled like dust. It couldn’t be gripped or contained. John slid through his fingers like water. They drifted apart with peaceful inexorability even as Moriarty tried to hang on, breaking chunks from John with his raking fingers. Then with a growl, the ground getting closer at a hundred and seventy-seven feet a second, Moriarty finally unfolded his wings and the air caught him in an instant and sent him speeding away through the darkness.

John was falling headfirst, feathers fluttering away to join the pinpricks of stars. He felt truly weightless. His body was disintegrating through the gaps in his ruined clothes.

Sherlock.

Sherlock was alive.

He had orders to carry out.

He had Sherlock.

John opened his mouth and roared, dragging the atoms of his fading body back together. On the London street below, puddles rippled and the windows of the office buildings shattered. The lost and broken pieces couldn’t be restored but John forced strength into what remained. He twisted in the air and spread his wings. That was when the friction really started to hurt. His feathers were shedding in handfuls. The broken wing was shuddering and cracking worse and worse. He was still falling, through he spread arms and fingers and prayed to be gossamer, for gravity to reverse itself.

He slowed and his arch of movement flattened just before he reached roof height. He was passing over London as fast as a jet. It took all his strength to keep his tilt parallel to the horizon, there was such a difference between his good wing and the wrecked one. He couldn’t land safely and he couldn't hit the ground like this – someone might be hurt.

By inches, he slowed his flight. It was hard to figure out his location from up here but he could see a place ahead where there were no more streetlights. He thought he’d passed over most of the city and seen Enfield landmarks, which meant that could be the Lee Valley and the marsh. A water landing was not going to be easy, but at least he wouldn’t come through some old lady’s ceiling.

When he could see the individual trees and the glint of a river pooling ahead, he pivoted his wings and flapped. The forest barrelled out of the darkness like a stampede and John fell like a stone.

 _Crunch_.

Blood dripped into his right eye. He no longer knew where the rest of his body was. He had stopped moving but he still seemed to be above the ground. He could hear the wind in the skeletal branches.

He let himself sleep, and hoped a jogger with a terrier didn’t find him in the morning.

\---

“John.”

He raised his head. In the distance, through sparse branches, he could see a thin line of gold. Dawn was coming; he had slept through the night, and Moriarty hadn’t found him. John shifted just a little and realised he wasn’t on the ground, but hanging in the branches of an old sycamore, only about eight feet over the grass. Both his wings were punctured and one arm tangled above his head, while the other hung like a pendulum below him. When he tried to turn and see where his legs were, his neck protested viciously.

“John!”

From below and some distance away he heard footsteps struggling through the waist-high bushes and thick grass. A round circle of torchlight flickered across the leaf-strewn ground and then rose to John’s face, blinding him. He closed his eyes and looked away.

The pad of feet and the light against his eyes disappeared. When he looked down again there was a man staring up at him.

A long, white face, black curls and wide blue eyes. Impossible. Sherlock was gaping back with the same disbelief, the torchlight lowered to John’s torso. John’s wings were stretched on either side, impossible to hide.

He laughed, though it came out as a gurgle and he felt broken ribs scrape against each other as he did so. Something about the pull of air into his lungs was more painful than expected. He wanted to say, _Moriarty didn’t lie._

“What… how can…” Sherlock climbed over a thick protrusion of roots and reached up to take hold of John’s hanging hand. He clenched his fingers around Sherlock’s glove and saw his friend swallow. “Do you know you’re missing bits?”

John tried to answer and finally realised that most of his throat was gone on one side. He closed his eyes – he felt Sherlock tighten his grip – and winced as he tilted his head and clicked his neck. He couldn’t heal properly, but he could reform what he had to make a temporary voice box. In a few seconds, disassembled cells drained out of his breastbone and unfurled into a cartilage tube as muscles climbed up from his shoulders and skin crept off his chest to cover the worst of the gap. He heard Sherlock’s sharp inhalation and opened his eyes.

John cleared his throat. “Explain that, genius.”

“Impossible,” Sherlock whispered. He shook his head, relaxing his features. “You’ve got some of the tree sticking through you. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No, no,” John coughed and then wished he hadn’t. “Let me die.”

“John!” Sherlock cried.

He gave a shaky smile, trying not to laugh again. “It’s fine. This body will… sort of reboot, alright? After I die. It’ll heal it up good as new, if we hide me somewhere safe for about a week. I don’t need food or even warmth, but what I do need is to stay away from prying doctors.”

“Heal,” Sherlock croaked, sounding drugged. “You won’t have your scar," he added, as if it was important.

“No, I guess I won’t.”

“Very well. We’ll… we’ll get you down,” Sherlock stripped off his gloves and coat – a new one, a caramel wool thing a little shorter than the billowing one John knew so well – and laid them down before gripping the torch in his mouth and clambering up the tree above John. As his weight bent the branches, the shafts stabbed through John shifted and he gave a grunt.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock was crouched beside him now, clinging to a higher branch. He reached one tentative hand out towards John’s broken wing. As he touched the shattered arch, agony made the rest of his body shudder. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I’ve had worse.”

Sherlock inspected the tangle for some time, his weight shifting minutely. 

“It may be easier if I cut off the branches and remove them when we’re on the ground,” he said at, his voice returning to its practical drone. He pulled a six-inch flick-knife out of his pocket and began to test the resilience of the wood.

“What’ll be easier,” John wheezed, “is if you just cut off the wings.”

Sherlock stared at him. “Won’t that… sort of… seraphicly neuter you?”

“What?” John didn’t understand for a moment, and then he shook his head. “No, they’ll grow back. It will take a while, but they will.”

Sherlock’s mouth was a hard line, but without hesitation he felt for the knobbled joined where the wings met John’s shoulders. “This is going to hurt.”

“Talk to me,” John said. “How did you find me?”

Sherlock held the torch between his chin and shoulder and began to cut. John closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He focused his mind on Sherlock’s smooth voice. “I’ve been following you since… since I last spoke to you. I thought there was a chance one of Moriarty’s clients would come after you. They weren’t to know the key code was a fake, were they?”

“What?”

“Oh, yes. The key code didn’t exist. I’ll tell you all about it so you can write the final story in your blog.” 

John huffed a giggle. “I doubt I have the stomach.”

“In your condition I doubt any of your digestive tract is functional,” Sherlock said dryly. He had slit most of the meat away from John’s back as quickly as cutting a steak in half. The sting was white-hot behind John’s eyes. Sherlock jammed the knife between the ball and socket of the wing-joint and John whimpered between his lips. There was a pause and Sherlock continued. “When I saw Moriarty alive I thought there had to be another explanation, I thought I was hallucinating. And his chums looked… inhumanly ugly. But I was still on the fire escape above the alley trying to figure out what to do when you – flew – and then he – well, you can imagine it took me a moment to gather myself.”

“You followed us?”

“You were much too fast. I called in a contact in naval research and managed to get a hold of a portable radar designed for low-flying drones. I could only find one of you still in the air. It was Moriarty, circling the area where you went down. I don’t think he found you, but I’ve spent the last few hours on foot looking for signs of a crash.”

The knife slit through the gristle of tendons and jammed into the socket of the two bones. “You should have told me you were alive,” John whispered.

The knife hesitated. Sherlock said, without any emotion, “You know now. What does it matter?”

“I have no idea what’s real about you now,” John answered.

“Don’t be stupid. You must have figured out Moriarty would ensure my death before there was any chance my humiliation could be disproved. You know me. Repairing my reputation is unimportant to me, but staying alive is significantly more valuable. This is just _me_ John. By comparison, your mere existence is currently defying most scientific knowledge on physics and biology while also making quite a raft of statements about theology. Which of us would you say is the more real?” Sherlock’s hands, warm and slick with blood, were braced one against the back of John’s neck and one wrapped tight around his wing, below where Moriarty had gripped it. He said perfunctorily, “Do you want to bite down on something?”

“Do it. Quick as you can,” John replied.

Sherlock wrenched the bones apart. Darkness bled across John’s vision and he fainted, coming to as Sherlock started on the second wing.

It took them almost an hour to extract John from the tree. He knew before it was over that his liver was well and truly ruptured and most of his vital organs were failing. His trick of intangibility had lost him mass from across his body, in uneven chunks here and there. He couldn’t hold onto the branches alone, but with Sherlock’s arm around his waist they managed to lower and drop to the ground with a minimum of further damage.

Sherlock helped him lie on the caramel coat. The git’s face went through a myriad of hungry, fascinated expressions as the stubby vestiges of the wings curled and withdrew into John’s back. John could see his lips twitching as he mouthed, “Fascinating,” under his breath.

He watched Sherlock clamber back up the tree to cut John’s wings down. When he stood with his arms full of bloodied feathers, John nodded. He stalked away through the shrubs until there came a distant splash as he threw the wings into the nearest marsh. Separated from John's body, they would disintegrate quickly. Hopefully fish and the elements would dispose of the rest.

Without the wings, with so much vaporised in the fall, he’d lost perhaps a third of his normal weight. Sherlock wrapped him in the coat and lifted him up with no-nonsense speed. The sun was above the horizon, still so low its rays were orange on the underside of the London smog. As Sherlock began to walk, John felt death coming.

\---

He awoke to a grey afternoon through a distant skylight. The honks and grumbles of heavy traffic sounded several stories below and were muffled behind curtained windows. John tested his lungs and then each arm and leg in turn, finally wriggling each finger and toe one by one. He rolled over, tugging the duvet and blankets tighter around his shoulders. He’d told Sherlock he didn’t need warmth but apparently Sherlock hadn’t listened. This was much more comfortable to wake up to so he should probably be thankful. He opened his eyes.

He lay on a mattress on the bare boards of an unfurnished room. On the floor beside his head was a bottle of mineral water and a cheap mobile with a blank screen. A post-it with ‘SWITCH ON’ in Sherlock’s hand was stuck to the front.

John cracked open the cap and finished off the water first. Then he sat up and turned on the phone. He checked the date and time: six days since he’d crashed in the park. He was wearing a pair of thin cotton pyjamas, still creased from the shop, and he ran his hands over his skin to check for any bones or ligaments that weren’t quite healed. He stretched thoroughly when he found he was intact and massaged his shoulder blades, but the wings hidden under his skin were still small stubs. They would take a few more months, maybe longer.

There was only one number saved in the phone’s address book. John called it, and Sherlock answered on the second ring.

He stayed on the line only long enough to confirm John was still in bed and arrived in less then an hour, in a new sports jacket that didn’t suit him plus a high scarf and a low cap that he took off at once. He sat cross-legged on the floor and held out a petrol station sandwich and a fresh bottle of water. John ate the sandwich in four bites.

“You’ve been checking on me,” John said, licking relish off his bottom lip.

“Have I?” Sherlock quirked an eyebrow.

“Footprints in the dust,” John smiled. “I do learn things, you know. Did you think I might stay dead?”

“I don’t have enough experience in these situations to be sure,” Sherlock answered. He glanced away, and then said lightly, as if it was a trivial matter, “I must ask, does your presence indicate the existence of higher authorities?” he pointed towards the dirty skylight to illustrate his point.

John nodded.

“But Moriarty doesn’t answer to Him,” Sherlock guessed.

“No.”

“And do you?”

John pursed his lips. He wriggled back until he could lean against the wall. “What you really want to know is whether or not He takes personal interest in humans. In you.”

Sherlock held his gaze. John finally rubbed his hands down his face. “I’ve been on earth for a long time. I live my life, I make my own decisions, I assume an appearance of humanity as far as is possible, which, given you were fooled,” he clear his throat, “is quite a convincing impression. I am instructed to… intervene, on very infrequent occasions. I thought I met you by accident, if there are accidents,” he shrugged. “However, things have changed. Since then I have been given orders that pertain specifically to you.”

“And what are those orders?” Sherlock asked.

“That I must ensure you go to hell when you die,” John said.

Sherlock made a face like that was only moderately interesting. If it had been a case, John would have said it was barely a five. Or maybe that was just the face Sherlock reserved for existential crises. He waited for John to continue.

“I can’t tell you why. It’s not my job to ask why,” John said slowly. “But I think I've figured it out, though I can’t under any circumstances tell you because I suspect it is the most dangerous piece of information on heaven or earth. Either way, I cannot disobey my orders. On the other hand, I,” he scratched his brow, gave a humourless laugh. “Christ, Sherlock, you’ve just come back from the dead and I’m asking you to die. For real this time,” John entwined his fingers together, rested them on his knees. “If you don’t want to go to hell, well, Moriarty knows you’re alive and he will be looking for you. This time round he will attempt at all costs to keep you around, I can tell you that much. I mean _at all costs_. If he has to drug you into a coma for the rest of your life he’ll pay the expense and more to keep the nurses quiet. I’ll stay and help you however I can. Whatever you decide to do, I’ll stick around.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed very slightly. “You can’t exactly stick around if I’m dead.”

“Yes. Yes, I can, and I will,” John nodded, his mouth set firmly downwards. “Of course I will. To hell,” he took a breath. It was something he’d both thought about and avoided thinking about at all costs. “It will be a new experience for me, I admit, but yes. I will be there. Every step. I already spent a week in purgatory thinking you were gone, I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

“To hell and back,” Sherlock droned.

“If anyone can manage it, it’s us,” John replied, though he had no illusions that even Sherlock could escape damnation.

For a moment the silence stretched between them, and then Sherlock’s face split into a broad grin.

“At last.”

“At last what?” John frowned.

Sherlock pushed himself to his feet. He brushed the dust off his legs and held out his hand to help John up. “Until now being dead has been unbearably dull.”

John stared at him. He knew Sherlock well enough to see the twitch in the corner of his mouth, to know just how uncertain he was – Sherlock! _Uncertain!_ \- and John could only give him at least some of the answers he wanted. For once, John knew more about the world they were walking into than Sherlock did.

As always, he expected his friend to soon surpass him. As always, John was glad to follow close behind. 

\---

_Art by ever-awesome[so-shhy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/so_shhy/pseuds/so_shhy) \- of a future scene in which Sherlock and John have returned from hell to find Moriarty's demons making a hell-on-Earth in London._


End file.
